The Beef of Rural Women

By Isabella Gyau Orhin


In rural Ghana, women are the main pillars around whom life revolves. Apart from playing their traditional and cultural roles of fending for the family and keeping the house, women in rural Ghana also play no small role in farming or agriculture which is the mainstay of the country’s economy.
Those in the hinterland are active farmers in cocoa, Ghana’s major cash crop as well as palm and coconut plantations among other food crops.
Their counterparts in the coastal areas also work hand in hand with their men, smoking the fish from the sea and carrying them to the market to sell.
In the mining communities, women are actively engaged in surgface mining, both legal and illegal.
Thus women spur rural economic activity in Ghana on.
In 2003, the then minister for Women and Children’s Affairs Gladys Asmah disclosed that rural women held 50 billion cedis in savings at various rural banks across the country.
These she said represent the savings of just a fraction of rural women in the country.
“ The economic prowess of rural women should therefore not be played down,” she said in reaction to foreign banks that had closed their branches in rural areas due to low economic activities in the country.
According to the 1987/88 Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS), women’s time burden is about 20-25 percent higher than that of men. Rural women supply 80 percent of the labour force for harvesting, storing, processing and marketing of staple crops. In addition, women are expected to provide the vegetables and ingredients that go with the staple, collect fuel wood and engage in income-generating activities during the dry season.
Their domestic responsibilities are often very time-consuming because of the time needed to travel to water sources, fields, stores, schools and health posts, and the lack of time-saving technology.
Also, the recent Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS), says 41% of women in Ghana have never been to school, while some have obtained secondary education fewer women have attained tertiary education
Illiteracy is a problem more prevalent to rural women. 49.5% of rural women in Ghana have not been to school
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized agency of the United Nations says in the Northern part of Ghana, women work both on the family farm, where the main staples of millet and sorghum are grown, and on their own plots, to cultivate groundnuts, cowpea, bambara beans, rice, millet and vegetables. When women received irrigated land under an IFAD-supported project, they took up commercial vegetable growing.

Women in this part of the country also manage small ruminants and poultry. Other activities include beer brewing and basket weaving.
As formal credit became available under the IFAD-supported project, and demand was promoted among women’s groups, many women applied for small production loans. Often this meant an even greater increase in workload as the women faced the responsibilities of loan repayment, with limited support from husbands or family.
IFAD also say rural women, mainly farmers, are at least 1.6 billion and represent more than a quarter of the total world population.
Also, women produce on average more than half of all the food that is grown: up to 80 percent in Africa, 60 percent in Asia, between 30 and 40 per cent in Latin America and Western countries.
Meanwhile women own only two per cent of the land, and receive only one per cent of all agricultural credit while only five per cent of all agricultural extension resources are directed at women.
Again Women represent two third of all illiterate people while the number of rural women living in poverty has doubled since 1970.
It is against this background that October 15 has been set aside by the United Nations as “ World Rural Women’s Day and is being celebrated all over the world this October. The theme for this year’s celebration day is “Rural Women; Leaders of Tomorrow”.

In Ghana, The Foundation for Female Photojournalists (FFP) in commemoration of the day has called on government, Civil Society groups and individuals to prioritize issues confronting rural women.
“Rural women have suffered a lot of discrimination in many areas of endeavor; they are subjected to severe abuse and violation of their constitutional rights,” The Foundation’s President Mardey Ohui Ofoe said.
According to her, in rural areas women remain subjects of burdensome labour conditions and traditional male dominance. They lack access to amenities such as schools, hospitals, good roads, and good drinking water and suffer many difficult conditions.
Education she said is a fundamental right of every citizen and it is an essential tool to develop critical interest among people and improve their capacity for decision making on a more solid base.
“With education, the rural girl-child will have a better knowledge of her rights. Through education, the human resource of rural women will be maximized for the development of Ghana,” she said.

“ Rural women are the movers and shakers of the agricultural world, and they are engaged in the rearing of animals, growing of food crops, processing of shear butter, rice and other food crops for consumption.”
In order for rural women to become leaders they must be given the opportunity to fulfill their potentials,” Ofoe said adding “We are calling on Government to respond swiftly to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)’s call to protect local industries through legislation.”
In the area of micro finance, she said it has become common for government institutions and some donors as well as Civil Society Organizations to hold several activities purporting to be helping women groups to economically expand their businesses.
“It is very impractical for women’s groups to expand their business merely by bank loans,” she said.
“Government must acknowledge that some of its trade liberalization policies jeopardizes the economic activities of rural women and makes valueless the small loans rural women receive,” she added.
The bad roads in rural setting make transportation difficult for rural dwellers especially women. The bad roads also put the lives of rural women in labour at risk since they can lose their lives if they do not get to the hospital on time.
Due to the lack of access to basic livelihood for rural women rural girls tend to migrate to the cities in search for greener pastures where they face exploitation.
“We call on individuals, civil society groups and governmental agencies to make life bearable for rural women.